But this week we are celebrating the first anniversary of a Pope who has an easy, comfortable relationship with the truth, a Pope who can tell us things we should have known. Somehow he speaks for all of us.
“The globalization of indifference makes us all unnamed, responsible, yet nameless and faceless,” he said while visiting the island of Lampedusa after 359 African refugees had died trying to reach Europe.
There are hundreds of quotes like this — insights we may have glimpsed here and there, but never quite been able to put into words. For example:
“A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.”
“Inconsistency on the part of the pastors and the faithful between what they say and what they do, between word and manner of life, is undermining the Church’s credibility.”
“The Church’s ministers must be merciful, take responsibility for the people and accompany them like the good Samaritan, who washes, cleans and raises up his neighbour. This is pure Gospel.”
A year ago I was one of 5,500 journalists in Rome to cover the election of the next pope. For the month leading up to this cool, rainy March 13 night in Rome we had all spoken about a possible Canadian pope — Cardinal Marc Ouellet. I thought an African pope was more likely. The writers, photographers and videographers in Rome were trading names among the European and Latin American cardinals. Never once did I hear the name Jorge Bergoglio.
To be ready, I had already prepared long, detailed stories ready to run the moment Ouellet, or an African, or a Latin American, or a European was elected. When that name — Bergoglio — came, my head exploded. Who was Jorge Bergoglio? A month of preparation and I was left sitting in front of my keyboard gasping for air.
Then the man walked out into the night air. The rain had stopped. The crowd had quintupled, at least. He wore a white cassock, just that. His left hand rose in a simple gesture.
“Buonasera,” said Pope Francis. “Good evening.” As though he just bumped into us outside a café on his way home.
Everything I had written in anticipation of a new pope was erased to make room for a new story, a different story. This Pope has been a different story from day one.
Each time Pope Francis has spoken he reminds us there are words and there is truth and the two were meant for each other. He is a Pope who lives in the Vatican guesthouse, is transported in a Ford Focus, carries his own briefcase, places impromptu phone calls to friends and officials, embraces invalids and poses for Vatican tourists in “selfie” photos. He urges us to live the Gospel and then goes out and shows us how.
“It’s been an extraordinary year,” Washington Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl told Catholic News Service. “He’s been able to help people see the face of Christ visible in His Church.”
Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban, South Africa, said Pope Francis is giving “the Catholic way of life such a different colour, a different tone, a different spirit.”
“Of course, for me as a Franciscan, it’s even doubly challenging because here’s a Jesuit living the Franciscan way of life better than I am,” Napier said. “It’s quite something.”
In Canada, the Pope who talks to pastors, talks about pastors and acts like a pastor has pastors excited.
Fr. Bill Burns, pastor at St. Luke’s parish in Thornhill, Ont., said he sees more parish priests smiling these days. The Pope is encouraging them to do the things they got ordained to do — to live their lives with and for the people.
“The focus is now on being actively involved in the life of the people,” Burns said. “Priests who generally go in that direction, rather than isolating themselves, I think they feel more comfortable with Francis.”
But if there is anything that makes a parish priest happy, it’s the effect this Pope is having on their parishes, said St. Andrew the Apostle pastor Fr. Sam D’Angelo from Sudbury, Ont.
“For me, what I notice in the parish is they are more open to acknowledging that there are pastoral needs that have been unmet for some time,” D’Angelo said.
When Sault Ste. Marie’s Bishop Jean-Louis Plouffe asked his pastors in Northern Ontario to gather parishioners to talk through the 39 questions sent out from the Vatican to help shape this year’s extraordinary synod on the family, D’Angelo had no trouble persuading parishioners to give up an evening to talk about Church teaching on family life.
That leads to a whole new attitude among people in the pews.
“There will be persons who really want to consider the Church again because the Church has a new hope about it with this new Pope,” D’Angelo said.
The change isn’t limited to the faithful, church-going Catholics, said Toronto pastor Fr. Carlos Augusto Sierra Tobon of St. Brigid’s parish in the city’s east end. Dealing with non-Catholics and non-Christians in his area, Tobon regularly finds himself in conversation about Pope Francis.
“They are all enthused with him. They see a very refreshing figure in his ministry as Pope. He shortens the distance between people,” he said.
Tobon finds himself frequently quoting the Pope in sermons. When he does, his parishioners talk to him about it on their way out. For Lent, Tobon and his parishioners erected a sign in the sanctuary declaring this a season of “justice, equality, simplicity and sharing” — an idea they got from Pope Francis.
Fr. Mark Van Patten, pastor at Transfiguration of Our Lord in Toronto’s west end, is amazed at how people are coming to a more integrated and complete relationship with their faith. Rather than determinedly going to church but ignoring the Pope and shutting out the challenges the Church must pose, Van Patten’s parishioners are now more willing to contemplate their relationship with the whole Church.
“He’s stirred an interest in people who before perhaps didn’t pay attention to some of the papal documents and messages,” Van Patten said.
In Sudbury, D’Angelo finds himself with five serious potential conversions. When D’Angelo asked the non-Catholics why they wanted to participate in a two-and-a-half-year evangelization program, they all said Pope Francis had piqued their interest.
Something similar is happening in classrooms. For Catholic students and professors of theology, the signals from Rome make a difference. For starters, it’s a lot more fun at the front of the classroom, said St. Michael’s College professor of moral theology Dennis Patrick O’Hara.
“The students feel there really is a breath of fresh air. They feel more invigorated,” O’Hara said.
A Pope who questions and speaks with candour has been an example for O’Hara’s students, from undergraduates to PhD. candidates, of how theology should approach the world.
“The complex questions don’t have to be answered by a rote answer. Now we can explore the complexity of the question, which reflects the complexity of their lives,” said O’Hara.
This leads to more, rather than less, rigour in the classroom, according to O’Hara. But while students sense a new freedom, they don’t believe the Pope is about to approve women’s ordination or consign Humanae Vitae to the dustbin of history.
“I don’t hear any of my students saying that. Their expectations are that we can have a more open and freer dialogue,” said O’Hara.
The Pope may endorse open dialogue but he has no intention of changing Church doctrine. He made that clear last summer in comments that got the full attention of both friends and foes of the right-to-life movement.
“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible,” the Pope told journalists on his plane ride home from World Youth Day in Brazil.
“I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. “The teaching of the Church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the Church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”
Even though the statement itself reaffirmed Church teaching, the change in tone took the world by surprise.
But not Campaign Life Coalition national president Jim Hughes. The Pope’s insistence on a context for discussing abortion and contraception was nothing new, as far as Hughes was concerned.
“For me, it was a tremendous positive,” he said.
The 40-year veteran of the political fight to outlaw abortion doesn’t see any wavering in Church teaching on the issue.
“I don’t think anything has changed, really,” he said.
Hughes allows that many pro-life supporters were chattering about the statement and the many interpretations that followed the interview. Some have expressed dismay over the Pope.
“I’ve just said, cut him some slack for God’s sake. Keep your eyes on the prize and ignore the buzz in the background,” said Hughes.
Hughes uses the example of Francis to encourage others to embrace a positive outlook and tone.
“I would say he’s a happy Catholic. I’m not sure we can say that about a lot of people in the Church in North America.”
Being pope in a media age isn’t easy. Speaking about faith, hope and charity, salvation and redemption when the camera has a 30-second attention span is a bit like explaining molecular physics to a hamster. Which makes it all the more remarkable that Pope Francis has done it with such ease.
“I would love to interview Pope Francis,” said Catholic Register columnist and Sun TV personality Michael Coren. “The man is obviously open to discussion, to giving his point of view.”
While few journalists will get that chance, journalists of all kinds — Catholic, atheist, conservative, liberal — see a real story in Pope Francis.
“While the Catholic story is bigger than the Pope, he’s always going to draw a disproportionate share of attention. That’s part of what makes the papacy the world’s most important religious office,” wrote Boston Globe Vatican correspondent and columnist John Allen in an e-mail. “And when you have a pope who really knows how to use his bully pulpit, he can change history.”
Michael Higgins, a media commentator on Catholic issues, says Francis is “letting the cards fall where they may.”
“For a lot of people that’s quite disturbing,” Higgins said. “For many others it’s really liberating. For the press of course, it’s wonderfully surprising. They’ve been dealing with either inaccessible popes or popes that are so tightly scripted that there’s no way you can get any kind of break in the carapace that allows you to see the inner person. This is unheard of.”
But with such a wealth of coverage that spans the media universe from serious broadsheets to rock’n’roll magazines, there’s something to please and displease everyone.
“As an Evangelical, I admire how he is showing the world an example of Jesus Christ and how He lived. This is what Christ’s redemption lived out can look like today,” said Lorna Dueck, host and producer of Context With Lorna Dueck. “There’s something risky and confrontational about how he is living out his faith to love God and neighbour.”
Taken as a whole, Higgins believes the media gets Francis, but he worries that the Catholic press has been too glowing. “A bit of a love fest,” he said.
“It’s always important to have a critical stream. That has an important role to call into check, to provide facts, to provide counter arguments. That’s important,” he said.
But Pope Francis’ reach extends far beyond the Catholic press, said Coren.
“If there’s anything that explains this Pope it would be that the conversation he’s actually having is with the non-Catholic world,” Coren said. “When we say the non-Catholic world we also mean he’s talking with Catholics who were baptized as such but haven’t been living that for a very long time.”
Pope Francis has a powerful weapon in his arsenal as a leader, according to former Ontario Education Minister and federal MP Gerard Kennedy.
“Authenticity,” said Kennedy. “It’s amazing how somebody with clear words and clear actions can have an outside influence. . . His success in getting a tremendous number of people interested in what the Church has to say is a lesson for anyone in terms of how you cut through the static and get people’s attention. Part of it is his consistency.”
The consistency is between what Pope Francis says and what he does. He reminds us over and over there are words and there is truth, and the two are meant for each other. Now we are waking up. When we go down to the breakfast table Pope Francis will be waiting. He has turned on the lights and is anxious for a conversation.